Category: Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Lily is an undergraduate student in English at King’s. She is particularly interested in prose literature that explores new beginnings. Through this work, she hopes to capture the universal experience of leaving home and the uncertainty that this can bring. 

When I first moved to London, I got a haircut. One of those ones with a name. That way, I would be the person with the ‘this-named-haircut’. I liked my hair because I looked familiar, like an image I’d seen before, reminded in the moment of the exact place and the exact time. Before, I looked too much like myself. This time, I could walk down the street and know, even for a short while, exactly who I was.

As the nights get longer and the mornings get shorter, I feel less of the day is my own. Today, I will leave behind the comforting monotony of my desk to get a coffee. I’ll go to one of those coffee chains with the bright lights and the over-enthusiastic staff. They will act like they haven’t just worked a six hour shift that mostly consisted of cleaning up other people’s used mugs. Somewhere I am familiar with, for fear of getting it wrong. Sometimes I think that everyone received a book on how to live their lives when they were younger and that mine got lost in the post. Sometimes I wish I could be old, 80 or something, and to have lived my life. To look back with regret at a life misspent but to know I don’t have to go through the agony of living it again. It’s raining and I don’t have a raincoat with me here. Isn’t it strange how the rain falls more slowly in the streetlight? Like it doesn’t wish to fall any further. It’s done it once and now it must do it again and again, for the rest of time.

I grew up in a place where there are no streetlights. There just aren’t enough people to justify the expense. I would like to know if there is a definitive number of people to justify the construction of a streetlight in an area. Sometimes I like to imagine there’s a man in a suit somewhere counting the residents of a town miles away from the comforting heat of his city office – comparing it to the calculated cost of installing a streetlight. He’ll use a physical calculator that he keeps in the top drawer of his desk and he’ll write the sums out on a little notepad that’s seen better days before typing the sums into a computer. Later, he will submit his findings to be reviewed by someone who has been there longer than he has. His spreadsheet will conclude that 199 is too few people to justify the expense but that 200 is just right, like some inhuman corporate game of Goldilocks. When I was at home, I would go out and hate the thought of seeing someone I knew. When I go out now, I know I never will. There will be nobody within the whole five minute journey that I will recognise. There will be nobody, in fact, that I will ever see again. They will go on living their lives just as I will go on living mine, and they won’t remember the brief window in which our lives crossed. Perhaps they will cross again some five years later – in a different place, a different time. Neither of us will notice or remember our first encounter.

I think that that’s the most important thing – not where I go, what will happen or even what I do – it’s what I remember. What I notice. What to do with a lifetime? What do I choose to take note of, to carry with me for the rest of my life? If it’s not this face, it will be this one. If it’s not this book, it will be that one. If it’s not this memory, then, perhaps, that one.

Sometimes I think that I miss the memories of home more than the place itself. I miss the long summer mornings at liberal churches in the country when I was a child. I miss the days that felt like they would last a lifetime and, in a way, they always will. They will be the place I am constantly returning to, as if I never left. At home, people always say see you later, never goodbye. I miss waking up in a town where the buses never come and the sun stretches on like the yawn of a cat in the mid-morning sun. I miss the space underneath my bed that’s full to the brim with all of the stuff I’ve collected over the years, boxes bursting out, full of old memories and opportunities to create new ones. In my new room there is so much empty space. The opportunity to fill a space, to create a life from nothing.

When people back home ask how London is, I will always mention how it’s so busy and there are so many people. What I really want to say is that I hate how you feel like you’re never alone. I hate how there are hundreds of little supermarkets with nothing in them. I hate how I have to walk ten minutes in the rain to get a bus that will take me to not quite where I want to be. Most of all, I hate how when I look to the sky at night, I see absolutely nothing. Now my hair has grown out, I look in the mirror and I’m faced with the person I least wished to see.

By Lily

Sìana Baker is a second year undergraduate English student at King’s College. She enjoys twentieth-century poetry, philosophy, literary theory and modern film.

I have been writing poetry, quite literally, since I learned what it was. I’ve actually been writing stories since before I could write – I used to love the Simpsons, so I would draw pictures accompanied by horizontal lines of broken zig-zags (like in the newspapers in the cartoon) and rehearse ‘reading’ the story for my reception class. My writing has always been everywhere: any English schoolwork was hung on my bedroom wall and on the walls at school and my diary, no matter where it was or at what age, always had poetry in it.

But I am not a prodigy. I wasn’t writing symphonies at seven or solving the fifth postulate, I was born in Lincolnshire trying to deal with my mother. My poetry was never that good and still isn’t where I would like it to be, but I am slowly learning.

Of all the pressures in my life, I never want poetry to be one. I want to be effortlessly good at it: I want to write poetry like I walk to school, like I tell the right person I love them or like I get over a cold; because I want to, because it is good for me and because I would be half the person without it. Pressure does not make me a diamond, it makes me a wreck. Hence, all my poetry is written in one go, in twenty minutes and never edited. I like leaving the trance behind and going about my day, or to bed; I like having something to look back on in a few months when my writing is better and being able to love what is bad and good about it.

I am raw and messy person. I can quite confidently say that it is my favourite thing about myself; I love not caring (if it’s ethical) and the comfort that gives other people to want to be themselves, or in reassuring them that things really don’t matter as much as people might suggest. I am shamelessly ragged and I like my poetry to be the same way, for myself and for the people that might see it on my social media, because I hate the idea that everything in art, and everything in social media, has to be curated as a masterpiece. I am not a masterpiece and neither is my writing and we both love ourselves endlessly for that.

I hope you enjoy!

Daniel is a mature undergraduate currently pursuing an English BA at King’s College London, while also working as an English and guitar tutor. Originally from Birmingham, where he spent the majority of his life, he was once a songwriter and performer. During his time in Birmingham, he fronted several bands, including the psychedelic indie band Sleep Patterns. To make ends meet, he took on various day jobs over the years, including working in an art shop, a library, in social care, and being involved in musical projects with the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) and the music/arts collective DIE DAS DER, in addition to teaching guitar. In recent years, his focus has shifted from songwriting to prose writing.

His literary influences are varied, with a particular admiration for writers who possess unique, characterful styles such as Dickens, Nabokov, and, more recently, Jean Rhys with her angst-ridden prose. He also has a deep appreciation for science fiction, particularly the works of authors like Ursula K. le Guin, Gene Wolfe, and Ray Bradbury, who blend literary sensibilities with the genre. He believes that literature is most powerful when it serves a clear purpose, and sees science fiction as a means to reflect and stylize our world and times, often in a distorted or exaggerated manner. Writers such as Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Margaret Atwood have done this effectively, and it is in this tradition that Daniel has been experimenting with writing his own short science fiction stories.

For his most recent story, Daniel was inspired by the way a small number of Silicon Valley companies have shaped our digital culture, driven by their competitive, libertarian values. The book Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win It Back) by Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams sparked further reflection on how this influence has quietly crept into society, prompting him to consider what might happen if it were taken just a step or two further.

 

How Mewing Can Improve Your Profile

By Daniel Sheridan

 

Marcus can’t stop looking at the palm of his hand. He leans back on the training bench and stares at the rising numbers on the screen encased in his skin – kg’s lifted, treadmill milage, water intake – his profile updating automatically. Two hours at the gym won’t enhance his visibility much, not compared to the sponsored content he’d paid for this morning. It’s all good profile maintenance, though.

He passes the woman in the grey tank top he’d seen doing leg presses. Her toned body alone is clickbait. Some guy is talking to her. Marcus clocks his torso – too thin between those bulking upper arms. He needs to get his workout plan sorted, competition on OneProfile is ramping up; the algorithms are merciless. But if Miss Clickbait wants to laugh at his weak jokes they’re welcome to each other.

Another glance at his palm-device as he leaves: his content is performing well.

 

 

 

Black BOSS shirt. Navy chinos. He places each item of dry-cleaned clothing on the bed. White Calvin Kleins. Marcus trims his eyebrows then slips his boxers – some minor topiary. He massages a hair growth stimulant into his cheeks after moisturising. Thirty years old and his beard is still little more than bumfluff.

Marcus is sculpting his hair when his palm-device buzzes. It’s Eliot. He steps onto the balcony to take the call, palm against his ear. The upper portion of the sky is a clear, pearlescent blue above a few puffs of low hanging cloud. From his fourteenth floor Hackney pad, he takes in the horizon dominated by the vaunting financial district.

‘Shit, Marcus, are you following the news about Bristol? Their system is still shut down. Are we culpable?’ Eliot is getting paranoid. ‘I’m shitting it about that last malware protection update, we rushed it through.’

They have all worked hard for these contracts. Eliot is ruining the glory for himself. It had taken the full range of Marcus’s wily charms to sell the software to the North Bristol Trust, adding tens of thousands to the income from healthcare companies in Lagos and Hanoi and Mumbai and he forgets where else. CyberFort Security is a global success.

‘We both know the software wasn’t built for Health Records systems. And I had someone asking me some weird questions outside the office last week. It could have been someone from the media, or the police.’

‘You’re worrying too much, Eliot. Just keep on with the patching work. And check your bank balance – it works like a diazepam.’

Marcus is beginning to feel he has the legitimacy to breathe in and out the same air as those FTSE 100 elites. To breathe the brightest, cleanest air, the purest oxygen cut from the atmosphere by the peak of The Shard, its spire puncturing the sky to let out the air of excess.

He tells Eliot to chill and taps his palm to end the call.

 

 

 

Marcus inhales some of the strawberry of Sarah’s vape clouds as she scrolls through her profile – fitness, education, income; stopping at the personal details section, she points to her date of birth.

‘Wow. You look much younger.’

‘Well, of course.’ It was supposed to have been a compliment – they had matched on OneProfile, so he’d already glanced through her breakdown. ‘Don’t you understand how much work we have to have done now? Each year closer to forty and fucking OneProfile’s algorithms drag down our visibility, much faster than for you blokes. You understand that, right?’

‘But if it works…’

‘Works for who?’

‘It brought us together tonight, for one thing.’ He coils an arm around Sarah’s waist as he gently rocks his hips to the Latin guitar noodling from the beer garden speakers. ‘And it sounds like you practically run this– what is it, a podcast? So you hire your own staff, I presume…’ A brief nod. He’s starting to think she’s not into him, but he’ll make his point anyway. ‘When all this was spread across different platforms – professional linking, photo sharing, dating – it was a mess.’ Since the Silicon Valley Merger, life has become streamlined. No one can argue against the convenience of having those key platforms operating under one point of reference – one profile. Performances across all areas – followers, qualifications, income, days without sick leave – all contribute to OneProfile visibility. ‘It makes sense for you to see your candidates’ merits all laid out before you, surely. Like a stats screen in a video game.’ Marcus grins.

‘I’m not a gamer.’

‘But when you’re hiring, you just skim the most visible profiles, right? Simple. Think of all the time we used to waste on inefficient people.’

‘Personally,’ Sarah takes a micro-step away from him, ‘I think it needs regulation’.

He had thought he’d found a good alternative to Miss Clickbait tonight. A few exchanged messages and Sarah had agreed to meet immediately, his trending profile already working its magic. Marcus had been mewing in the angled mirrors behind the bar, checking out his side-profile when she’d tapped him on the shoulder. He’ll take a good pic of that improved jawline later. She’d been interested in his work, asking about the way he tests his company’s antivirus software, those lucrative contracts. But once the conversation had gotten onto things more personal, she’d seemed to go cold.

‘These things we used to call phones,’ Sarah spreads open her hand, displaying her palm-device, ‘we can’t truly compete on the jobs market without modelling ourselves through them. You say it suits employers, but if our bodies must be gamified like this, public ownership of OneProfile is the only way we can all have a say.’

‘But OneProfile and palm-devices both came from the private sector. They met a demand. People have always loved their beautiful tech.’

‘And you don’t think it’s a problem to have no alternatives?’ Sarah breathes a fresh fruity plume.

‘But it’s like – realistically, Amazon is the only company people order their shit from now. Is anyone calling for alternatives there?’ With a service that slick, no need to talk about healthy competition or ethics. Get my fucking drill bit to my door tomorrow morning. I need it. ‘It works. Like OneProfile, keeping everything running smoothly, including your business,’ he says, disentangling his arm. He snatches a glance at his palm-device: twenty-nine missed calls from Eliot.

 

*

 

He tries the four-seven-eight breathing technique encouraged by David, his forensic psychologist. A course of therapy is one of the conditions of his bail. The defence had managed to soften his sentence by claiming ‘mental ill health’ as a factor.

David counts and Marcus breathes. Four seconds breathing in – hold for seven – eight seconds out. Four plus seven plus eight is nineteen.

He tries not to imagine what a criminal record will do to his profile. CyberFort Security’s business ratings have already dropped, pummelling his visibility. He tugs at the bandage covering his palm and starts to hyperventilate again.

David asks if he would like a glass of water. No, he doesn’t want any water, he doesn’t want to breathe stillness into his body. He wants to pace up and down the ribbed carpet of the magnolia-walled room. He wants to check his profile. He can’t function without knowing the damage. Marcus stares at a piece of sodden sky though the narrow, open window. He’s fallen far beneath that superior FTSE air now, raggedly sucking in the dregs, a bottom feeder gagging on the mud. A cold draft chills his clammy skin.

A police officer enters the room. His heart thuds at the bang of the wind-slammed door. It’s nothing to do with Marcus, David assures him, not to worry, this is still his space.

Marcus is against therapy. An ex had once urged that he try it after he’d become too obsessive and spreadsheety with his profile goals. But no, everyone knows the diagnosis of a psychiatric condition makes you less algorithm-friendly, even if the official line is that OneProfile can’t access medical details.

‘Let’s go back to the numbers,’ says David. He can’t forget that last glimpse of his lamed profile – his stats had been decimated. ‘I find it helps clients to work towards acceptance of guilt by beginning with the data, to start seeing the unchangeable facts of the situation as they are.’

‘I … I need to see it.’ He pulls at the corners of the bandage.

‘Let’s just focus on those facts. The hospital cyber-attack in Bristol caused delays in treatment for,’ David taps his palm-device, ‘two-hundred-and-sixteen patients, the complications of which included seven deaths.’

‘What? I thought we were talking about my profile data…’ Marcus had listened to Sarah’s investigative podcast. She’d called him a ‘purveyor of the cybersecurity equivalent of combustible cladding’. His only real digital talent, Sarah claimed, was in manipulating OneProfile visibility to his company’s advantage, shouldering CyberFort to the fore in search engine results. He’d swipe-righted his way into a honey trap.

‘And then there’s the Vietnamese clinic–’

‘I need to see my profile,’ Marcus says through clenched teeth. David removes his horn-rimmed glasses and slowly cleans the lenses with a cloth. He’d get more engagement if he’d only invest in some fashionable glasses.

‘You’re obsessing again, Marcus.’

He knuckles away hot tears with his bandaged hand. David continues tapping his palm-device. His voice softens. ‘How do you feel?’ Marcus’s lungs feel algorithmically suppressed.

He rips the bandage from his hand. His device has been confiscated, leaving a raw, rectangular hollow in the flesh of his palm. The veins mapping across red-brown sheets of exposed muscle seem to flicker, splitting apart, forming and reforming into a jargon of nonsense words and numbers incessantly scripting in the wound.

Marcus feels illegitimate.